Wednesday, May 05, 2010

Chariots of the Gods

[Chariot of the Gods - Warren Widener Edition]

It is a fun theory but the physics are formidable. There is moving a craft to near light speed which would require unimaginable amounts of energy, transporting it between stars, decelerating from near light speed which would require the same energy as the acceleration, arriving at the exact moment there is intelligent life on the destination planet (there has been life on earth for 3.5 billion years, but most of that time is was only blue-green algae), remaining undetected, returning to near light speed, going back to the origin world, decelerating again, then coping with the fact that the voyage would have taken at a minimum centuries in ship's time, but millions of years would have elapsed on the home world. Making the "Welcome Home" parade dubious since the astronauts' species would likely have become extinct in the meantime, as happens to most species in earth history and one presumes elsewhere as well .

My guess is that if there is any interstellar space travel or ever was or will be, it would be between planets around stars in binary or trinary orbit around one another, like Sirius which is two stars or Alpha Centauri.which is three. It is even possible that there might be interstellar travel between planets around stars in the closely packed cores of globular clusters where there are many stars within a fraction of a light year of one another. But out here in the wide open ranges of an outer arm of the Milky Way, it is hard to see how it could happen.